My dreams are sweet. They’re the only sweetness that remains to me in this
claustrophobic world of cold metal and plastic, of soft hums and beeps, of stale
odors. Outside the small window it’s blacker than black, pierced by waves and
waves of brilliant, twinkling lights. It would be pretty if it ever changed,
even slightly. Or if I could go out into the vastness. But I can’t.

So I fall asleep. And then I
dream.

In my dreams she dances. She twirls and spins and
pirouettes in an elegant, cream-colored dress. She looks like a swan that has
just emerged and found her wings. She is doing a gentle waltz all by herself in
a glittering ballroom, floating in front of my eyes as she moves up and down
with the lilting beat, her feet gliding across the floor with achingly beautiful
grace. Her dress reveals white shoulders that could be porcelain if they didn’t
pulse with life. The place where her shoulders meet her neck is taut because she
is holding her head high. The line of her upturned chin is smooth and chiseled
and her smile is brighter than all the twinkling stars outside my grimy window.

As she dances before me, coming closer and then
gliding away, I reach out my silver gloved hand but she is just beyond my reach.
I feel a lump form in my throat and the trickle of a tear running down my cheek.
I want to rise to me feet, to approach her shyly, to offer her my arm. I ache to
join her in the dance, to twirl her around, to find my own legs. But, like in
most dreams, my legs are rooted in place and I can only watch. Still, it brings
me a hint of joy, the only joy I’m ever likely to experience again.

From somewhere in the distance I hear the sound of
cascading water - a fountain I think - and soft music. And then I hear the
voice:

“This Government, as promised, has maintained
the closest surveillance of the Soviet Military buildup on the island of Cuba.
Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a
series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned
island…

It was that voice which sent me
on this journey. I was the last faint hope for humanity. But what hope was there
really? Ahead of me, Mars is probably just a bone-dry chunk of rust colored
rock. But it’s human nature to strive until the last possible moment, to never
surrender, to defy the inevitable. I think it’s that fierce, indomitable nature
which caused us to ultimately destroy ourselves in the final, flaming
conflagration I’m leaving behind.

I wasn’t supposed to be alone on
this spacecraft, for what good is it if I survive by myself on Mars, only to
grow old and die, merging with the red Martian dust and blowing away into space,
the last of my kind? When Columbus went to the New World, didn’t he return home
and show others the way back there? But I can never return home for there is
only death and fire and poison there. There was no time to train someone to go
with me, no room in this tiny spacecraft, this little tin can floating among the
stars. So even if I can somehow make it to where I’m going and miraculously
survive, I’ll be the last remaining seed, left to rot and die, even if the seeds
I’ve brought along with me can take root in the Martian soil.

And now the voice is back. It’s saying something
else but I can’t understand. I’m weary of the voice so I think I’ll sleep again
because I have plenty of time. Earth has long since dwindled behind me and Mars
is far, far ahead.

I know she’ll come to me again when I sleep. And
she’ll dance once more. I’ll feel the soft breath of her swirling dress as she
comes close. I’ll smell her sweet perfume. I’ll hear the music of Heaven. But it
won’t be Heaven. If it was, I could rise to take her hand. We could dance
together. Instead, I’ll simply watch.

It will have to do.

***

The voice blared out from the small, black and
white TV fastened to the hospital room wall:

“I have today been informed by Chairman
Khrushchev that all of the IL-28 bombers now in Cuba will be withdrawn within 30
days. He also agrees that these planes can be observed and counted as they
leave. Inasmuch as this goes a long way toward reducing the danger which faced
this Hemisphere four weeks ago, I have this afternoon instructed the Secretary
of Defense to lift our naval quarantine.”

“Thank God,” she muttered as she turned her head
away. Then she said a soft prayer of thanks.

There were cheers and shouts from down the
hallway, most of them for the young, heroic President Kennedy, for he had faced
down the Russians and they had blinked. But mainly they were cheers of sweet,
blessed relief, for they would all live to see another day. The world would not
end in a fiery holocaust, the one that everyone had been dreading since
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But she didn’t feel much relief. Yes, the world
would go on but for her it would be a lonely world. The doctors had not given
her much hope.

“We can’t know for sure with comas,” they had told
her. “We have no way of measuring if there is any brain activity. But your
husband suffered a massive stroke. It’s not likely he’ll ever come back to us.”

She stared down at her husband lying on the bed
and listened to the soft beeps and hums from the machines, as well as the quiet
music from the transistor radio she had placed by his ear. He looked peaceful
enough, and occasionally, a brief smile fluttered across his face. Where was he
now? Was he lost in some alien world, like in the pulp science-fiction magazines
he always read? She’d gone home and gathered them up from his library. Then
she’d taken them here to the hospital and stacked them on the floor beside his
bed, hoping against hope that one day he would wake up and read them again. Or
had he simply gone and left her, leaving his wasting body behind, hooked up to
cold metal machines?

It was morning. 7:55 AM. She knew from the past
week that in five minutes it would be time for the nurses to go on a shift
change. This section of the hospital would be quiet for a short while and she
would be all alone with her husband, with no one walking by in the hallway, no
one coming in to the room. Hospitals were busy places but sometimes there were
lulls. She’d been here long enough to know when they came.

She closed her eyes and listened
to the soothing sound of cascading water from the fountain in the lobby down the
hall. All that water, running and running, the way the years ran as people got
older. The years with her husband had been mostly good. She’d given him most of
her life and she’d never regretted it. And now this.

What would life be without her
husband? There was an empty blackness stretching in front of her like the
blackness of space. A trickle of a tear ran down her cheek.

She reached over and gently turned up the volume
on the radio. It was set to an FM dance music station and they were playing
another waltz. That was her husband’s favorite, maybe because it was the only
dance he was ever able to do without having to count off the beat out loud. And
he always told her that she looked most elegant when she was doing a waltz.

She went into the small bathroom and opened her
overnight case. She gently pulled out the cream colored dress she had folded up
and placed inside. She put it on again, smoothing it in front of the mirror. It
was the dress she had been wearing the night her husband collapsed onto the
dance floor. She’d worn it all through those first few agonizing days as her
husband fought for life amidst the news flashes on the radio and TV about Cuba.
And now peace had returned. But her husband had not.

She came out of the bathroom and self-consciously
glanced around the room and out into the hallway, feeling a familiar lump
forming in her throat. She knew this was foolish. Anything she did now probably
wouldn‘t make a bit of difference. But it was all she could think of to do. And
there was always a chance. If her husband did finally wake up, she wanted him to
see her first, doing the thing he loved her to do.